matsu

Don’t forget that it was those experts in 1987 who had the vision and devised the technology which today allow you to make that statement. Your logic is the other way around.

My definition of an expert in any field is a person who knows enough about what’s really going on to be scared.
P. J. Plauger, Computer Language, March 1983

Jeroen,
You’re right, on both counts. I should have written “experts” instead of experts.

In retrospect, I had a feeling that was what you meant

It was just a few short years ago that the Zip drives (250 Mb and 750 Mb) seemed to be THE way to transport large files. Now, it seems laughable. My digital camera has more removable memory with a 1Gb Compact Flash card and that’s not even state of the art.

Taking into account of how long it took to get from 4 Mb SIMMS to 1 Gb DIMMS, I’d say it may be only 8 to 10 years before we have 1Pb on a flash drive hooked to our key ring. THAT’S when we can carry everything we ever wrote, read, or want to read with us everywhere we go. In fact, we will be able to store everything we ever watched on TV or in the movie theater. Cool!

What happens when it breaks down?

I don’t see why we’ll ever get to the point of carrying a PB on a fob. Sure, we might have that kind of storage at home as a backup, but by then we’ll be a few generations into wireless internet; I think that Google will be doing its thang with online storage and people won’t generally bother with carrying files around. Why would they?

Every time I upgrade (from 25 MB to 250 MB to 2 GB to 20 GB to 80 GB to 200 GB) I start to think how I will ever use so much space….

Always tell dad, All I need is so-much-space and there will be no more….and the need always arises…don’t know how, but it does…

I bought my wife her first portalble storage (128mb keychain Disk-on-Key) about 4 years ago for $115. I can now buy a PNY 2Gig usb flash drive for $115. Quick math is about a 16x increase in storage for the same price. That puts 32gigs of storage on a portable flash drive by 2010, and if i keep playing with the progression every 4 years(128Gig, 2048Gig, 32768Gig, 524288Gig, 1048576Gig) by 2030 you’ll have a petabyte keychain that will cost you about $115 in 2030 dollars.

This is simply by using the past 4 years as a rule of thumb (16x increase in storage every 4 years), but I’m sure that those who have really studied the trends in electronics and technology would estimate a more rapid curve, shaving that number off in reality by about 8 to 12 years.

Please let me know if you think my logic is flawed.

Thanks

Ted

Ted, I beleve you “hit the nail on the head” as they say. I agree with you. I
like to keep the driving force of technological development in mind, demand and money. Being a capitolist scocity, I beleve that with a high demand and all else being equal we will see it in 8 or so years as Ted stated, other wise I don’t beleve 1PB will hit the shelves later then 12 years from now.

After typeing all of this, I realize that this audience knows the affects of capitolisim and technology very well.

How do we use so much space? I’m pritty sure that I can do just fine with only a small bit of storage. But just like many other things, if you give me more then enough, I’ll find some way to use it! For example, higher res images/video, higher bit rate audio, have you seen the size of PC games lately!?! In the end, I don’t -need- it, but I just filled up my drives reccently and I will buy a new drive soon.

Please pardon my horrable spelling and thanks for reading,

Josh

I just had to make another comment….

I was surfing the web and noticed a document that mentioned Hard Drive storage history ( http://www.sm.luth.se/csee/courses/smd/149/l6-6.pdf ).

in 1995 the first consumer level 2 Gigabyte Hard Drive came out
in 2005 the first consumer level 500 Gigabyte Hard drive came out.

Since that’s a jump of 250x in 10 years… My guess on portable hard-drive like devices that store a Petabyte would be at a minimum only 12 to 14 years away…. by that time I would like to imagine that solid state storage insted of hard drive storage will have become the standard… One can only hope…

Reaching a Petabyte storage capacity with portable devices is going to require different technology from what’s in use for consumer products right now.

I don’t know if I could even begin to guess when it’s going to happen though. I just hope I’ll be still alive when that happens. I could store all my pirated mp3s on one device

Not gonna happen this decade and I doubt next decade either. I’ll put down 2025.

I believe that there is a real need to have that much storage with you all the time. the fact is that computing will have completely changed by the time this is possible.

We tihnk cell phones are cool now with their cameras, but imagine one with two projectors on it. One for a virtual keyboard and another for a virtual screen. The virtual keyboard is already a reality.

When you have a divice like this, you will want to have as much memory as you possible can since you will be able to watch TV, movies, and basically do whatever you want anywhere you want.

By the end of this year, I predict that there will be a 32GB USB dive (there is already an 8GB drive for sale now). But for the 1PB drive I will have to put my money on the year 2020. The technology as we know it now will be completely different (I’m thinking hollographic crystals, that would be cool) but I think it will only be 15 years or so till we see 1PB.

I say 2040.
While Ted makes an interesting point, there’s a simple problem. That increase was most likely made by cramming stuff closer together on the chips. After a certain point, they’ll have to develop all new technology for data storage, because they’ll get to a point where if they put the stuff any closer the heat would just cause it to melt itself. So I’m betting an extra 5-10 years, because:
A) The smaller they get the harder they are to make smaller (I would think so anyways)
and B) at some point they’re gonna stall for a little while.

I look forward to 1 Petabyte RAM in my cellular phone.

1 PB Storage is just.. insane. I mean, comeon. A million gigabytes.

I doubt anybody is -ever- going to be able to fill it up. But anyway, with the ideas of holographic crystals and nanotechnology coming into play, I’d say big jumps in space for USB drives are coming much sooner than you all think. Nanotechnology is a bit more experienced than holographic as they stand, as it is used for a variety of things – most notably clothing. NT is used to repel moisture from clothing, and some clothing lines take advantage of this with dress pants. It’s really quite a neat idea. NT is also used in the army, and is further being developed to make uses from preventing bacteria and bio-toxins from passing through clothing, and keeping the wearer a certain temperature.

As well, talks are being made about human-integrated computers. I’ll let your imaginations run wild on that idea =P

First in response to Rob W, I hope to god I never rely on google for my main storage, or even backup storage requirements.

I don’t see any benifit to hosting my files online (and risking security) over carrying them with me, especially if it is an easy to carry device.

One thing that’s usually held true is that if you give resources to software engineers, they’ll use them. This is true with much more memory available on machines now. If as much effort went into memory optimisation as it used to now we wouldn’t need half the memory we use today. It’s used because it makes the programmers job easier.

The same will become true for storage space. You give it to them, they’ll use it. At the moment there is still a lot of like compression/decompression written into software in an effort to save space. You remove the need to save space, you remove this extra work from programs, they run much more efficiantly.

I don’t doubt that if we create the storage, we’ll use it.

According to Moore’s Law (which incidentally seems to work pretty well for hard disk sizes), approximately in 21 years from now (2027) we could have a $3k 1 PB disk.

Guido

Sorry, in my previous post I meant “a $3k 1 PB USB disk”. A 1 PB hard disk could be available in 16 years from now (2022).

Guido

Well, not so fast… in 18 mth a new tehonlogy AMC will help put 1tb flash drives…so 2010 … maybe the same will give start up to 1ptb in 5 yr ahead..
Don’t be so pessimistic…!
Search google!

PS i think around 2025 we will have 1 EB flash drive . yes that is
1000 at 6, and by 2050 we will reach the limit , the TODAY LIMIT of
one 1000 at 8, yotta- [1YB] flash , I am not kidding!